Obama, With Reluctance, Returns to Action in Iraq — WASHINGTON — In sending warplanes back into the skies over Iraq, President Obama on Thursday night found himself exactly where he did not want to be. Hoping to end the war in Iraq, Mr. Obama became the fourth president in a row …

Pentagon Announces Iraq Airstrikes With a Tweet — News first broke of the U.S. starting air strikes on Iraq militants in an unexpected way - it was announced by the Pentagon press secretary's Twitter account. — The account, associated with Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby …

Cease-Fire in Gaza Expires, and Strikes Resume — JERUSALEM — As a 72-hour truce in Gaza expired at 8 a.m. Friday, Palestinian militants fired barrages of rockets into Israel and the Israeli military responded with airstrikes, one of which killed a 10-year-old boy, according to relatives.

Ask Andrew W.K.: My Dad Is a Right-Wing A**hole — [Editor's note: Every Wednesday New York City's own Andrew W.K. takes your life questions, and sets you safely down the right path to a solution, a purpose or — no surprise here — a party. Need his help? Just ask: AskAWK@villagevoice.com]

Caution needed with Gaza casualty figures — War zones are not easy places to collect statistics. — In the Gaza conflict, most news organisations have been quoting from the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), which leads a group of humanitarian organisations known as the Protection Cluster.

Inequality Is a Drag — For more than three decades, almost everyone who matters in American politics has agreed that higher taxes on the rich and increased aid to the poor have hurt economic growth. — Liberals have generally viewed this as a trade-off worth making …

Wolfowitz: We ‘won’ the Iraq War — Paul Wolfowitz, a former senior George W. Bush administration official and one of the chief Iraq War architects, said on Tuesday that the U.S. “won” the war in Iraq. — When asked his thoughts about the current situation in Iraq and whether the war was a mistake …

Don't Give Booker a Pass — Cory Booker may be the most puzzling man in the Senate. We don't know where he lives. We don't know whom, if anyone, he lives with. And he's been caught in lie after lie about his heroics. Yet, this enigma of a man has emerged as the king of odd-couple bromance …

America's Moral Obligations in Iraq — Which politician uttered the following words: “Do we sit on the sidelines and watch an entire people be slaughtered or do we marshal military forces and move in quietly to put an end to it?” John McCain? Joe Lieberman? Scoop Jackson? Wrong.

The Democrats' Goldwater — Elizabeth Warren leads the party's leftward march. — Republicans had Barry Gold-water. Democrats now have Elizabeth Warren. What do they have in common? Years back, he pointed the way for his party, and now she's doing the same thing for hers.

U.S. drops bombs on ISIS — This late-breaking news from NBC's Jim Miklaszewski and Courtney Kube: U.S. officials tell NBC News that two US Navy FA-18's dropped two five-hundred pound bombs on ISIS enemy forces outside Erbil this morning. No word on casualties.

Tropical Storm Iselle Update: Only Second Landfall On Record in Big Island of Hawaii; High Winds, Flooding Rain Continue (FORECAST) — Tropical Storm Iselle in a Friday morning update from the Central Pacific Hurricane Center, became only the second tropical storm on record to landfall on the Big Island of Hawaii early Friday morning.

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